I've written and directed music videos...this is quite possibly the most beautiful music video I have ever seen. It is Steinbeck's 'The Grapes Of Wrath' set to music...the images are so evocative and so deeply touching.

[video.virginradioitaly.it]

I actually don't care if Jagger's voice is thin...at an age when the only noise most of their contemporaries can make is while passing gas these cats are still making incredible music...and Jagger is still putting what he has to offer out there. We are really fortunate and blessed...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-06-11 06:37 by Turd On The Run.

Quote
Turd On The Run
I've written and directed music videos...this is quite possibly the most beautiful music video I have ever seen. It is Steinbeck's 'The Grapes Of Wrath' set to music...the images are so evocative and so deeply touching.

[video.virginradioitaly.it]

I actually don't care if Jagger's voice is thin...at an age when the only noise their most of their contemporaries can make is while passing gas these cats are still making incredible music...and Jagger is still putting what he has to offer out there. We are really fortunate and blessed...

Let's all be silent for a moment and thank the Lord.

Thank the Devil, kleermaker...Sir Mick...and have a little sympathy...

i agree with Turd, and i'm not saying that just because i like to say 'i agree with Turd' - in this case i really do... agree with Turd, that is.

yes it is, great!

I wonder if Nicky Hopkins came up with the melody so beautiful or was MJ playing around on the piano and Nicky took it to to the heavens. He should of got song credit because without his part its just another richards/jagger song mostly jagger who writes 99% of the lyrics

play that guitar boy

Quote
Turd On The Run
I've written and directed music videos...this is quite possibly the most beautiful music video I have ever seen. It is Steinbeck's 'The Grapes Of Wrath' set to music...the images are so evocative and so deeply touching.

[video.virginradioitaly.it]

I actually don't care if Jagger's voice is thin...at an age when the only noise most of their contemporaries can make is while passing gas these cats are still making incredible music...and Jagger is still putting what he has to offer out there. We are really fortunate and blessed...

Truly great. What a great song. What an amazing video. I agree. Thanx.

That´s been my opinion...for WEEKS...its a masterpiece! All the way from the singing to the end of the video...I Love it...been sendin´it to friends...

This is another song that just gets better with every listen.

This whole album (cd2), is excellent and I love this song/video as well.

Lucky to have loved a band (for me since the 80's) for so long and to still be rewarded with great music.

I could have 'hitched my wagon' to Duran Duran or Depeche Mode...whew!

I love this tune as well but many people seem to hate it for some reason. I'm actually quite surprised that all the comments on this thread have been positive so far.

Yep, it's a good'un for me too

Question for Turd on the Run: Where do you think the older clips come from? some of the clips look officially old and some are staged. Who compiled this montage and can you also tell me what you think of the meaning of the guy that misses the bus and is playing with the stones??

[by just actually writing that last bit down I think it occurs to me the meaning actually] (!)

the video drives me crazy because I have all these questions...I need context.
and whats with the burning tree?

I see:
poverty
city life
getting out
gotta leave
boy on train
girl on bus
heading west
desolation
"we quit"
"thanks"
"desire"
dead cow in river
heaven



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2010-06-11 18:24 by tumbled.

have you noticed Jagger of 2009 nearly going back to the Jagger of 1985 !!! with the snarling...check out timer of 3:30-3:3:45...reminds me of his solo growling stuff with Bowie...classic 80's...

yes how often i have yeared for the mick of the eighties. not.

the video is impressive; turd on the run has great descriptive abilities and i agree it's really a lot of stuff .... almost too much so as to be disparate in relative vision to the songs lyrics imo. like the vid ammeblage director is talented but not really into the stones. that vid would be striking with all that iconic imagery if kermit was singing it's not easy being green. actually that would have made more contextural sense...
note to self; call kermit's agent...book him for beelyvid.

ok where was i?

uh, it's not that mick's voice is 'thin' imo. i think he sings fine; sounds fine; is in possession STILL of a majestic and original sound with enough tone plenty enough tone and facility to work wonders. absolutely belive that.

it's that, imo, mick is too histronic. this was cut so long ago maybe not in a key he's comfortable in now; i don't know THAT for sure......
but the studio voke performance to the renewly mixed track (nice enough!!) (interesting enough!!)... is pure waste...to avoid ungentlemanly language....
so over the top histrionic... there's nothing of his natural expressive talent to get thru the caricatured overbearing mess he makes of this. what a shame to have exile on main street, perhaps the single gresatest rock and roll release of the entire art form!! be sullied by cheap promotional trash add ons....
imo.

i submit a thread name adjustment to:

"Following The River Video - A Messterpiece



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-06-12 00:45 by Beelyboy.

I think I like the video more than the song.

Surprisingly enough, I was not in love with the song at first but Stones Blah is so right, it grows on you and gets better every time you hear it! Yup, another Mick Masterpiece, lovely!!

It's all good.

The Exile bonus disc is the best music I've heard by anyone in many years.

What a treat :-)

Quote
Eleanor Rigby
have you noticed Jagger of 2009 nearly going back to the Jagger of 1985 !!! with the snarling...check out timer of 3:30-3:3:45...reminds me of his solo growling stuff with Bowie...classic 80's...

You don't have to be insulting, I actually like this song!

Yes........excellent song,the gospel singers make it. I am sorry though, MJs vocal is, TO ME, very hard to take.Most lame, I agree about the growling although to me it sounds like he forgot the words and made some Joe Cocker like noises.

But again............I am very happy that we have ''new' material to discuss vs. fake tour rumors to discuss. I really do hope we get the rest of the "golden age" discs done up for us like they have done with Exile!

Quote
Beelyboy
yes how often i have yeared for the mick of the eighties. not.

the video is impressive; turd on the run has great descriptive abilities and i agree it's really a lot of stuff .... almost too much so as to be disparate in relative vision to the songs lyrics imo. like the vid ammeblage director is talented but not really into the stones. that vid would be striking with all that iconic imagery if kermit was singing it's not easy being green. actually that would have made more contextural sense...
note to self; call kermit's agent...book him for beelyvid.

ok where was i?

uh, it's not that mick's voice is 'thin' imo. i think he sings fine; sounds fine; is in possession STILL of a majestic and original sound with enough tone plenty enough tone and facility to work wonders. absolutely belive that.

it's that, imo, mick is too histronic. this was cut so long ago maybe not in a key he's comfortable in now; i don't know THAT for sure......
but the studio voke performance to the renewly mixed track (nice enough!!) (interesting enough!!)... is pure waste...to avoid ungentlemanly language....
so over the top histrionic... there's nothing of his natural expressive talent to get thru the caricatured overbearing mess he makes of this. what a shame to have exile on main street, perhaps the single gresatest rock and roll release of the entire art form!! be sullied by cheap promotional trash add ons....
imo.

i submit a thread name adjustment to:

"Following The River Video - A Messterpiece

Indeed. Well said . . .

Love it too. There's something very Exile about it.





JumpingKentFlash

Great footage, even if it has nothing to do with the song and nobody from the band appears in the video. I agree that MJ's vocal is histrionic and the over-emoting sounds like he's trying to hard to sell a middling lyric. But this is mostly at the beginning, and when the song picks up steam it's not as noticeable. Not a bad tune. Could have been better though.

I don't know. I think it's in the class of Memory Motel and Fool To Cry (Highly regarded by me). I like it very much. The video is great. It tells something. I don't know what, but it does. Mirror this video to that of Don't Stop. Both are trying to tell something. One succeeds in the best way possible, and the other one fails miserably, although that's not a strong enough word for how bad it is.

JumpingKentFlash

Quote
tumbled
Question for Turd on the Run: Where do you think the older clips come from? some of the clips look officially old and some are staged. Who compiled this montage and can you also tell me what you think of the meaning of the guy that misses the bus and is playing with the stones??

[by just actually writing that last bit down I think it occurs to me the meaning actually] (!)

the video drives me crazy because I have all these questions...I need context.
and whats with the burning tree?

I see:
poverty
city life
getting out
gotta leave
boy on train
girl on bus
heading west
desolation
"we quit"
"thanks"
"desire"
dead cow in river
heaven

The Following The River video - directed by Julian Gibbs - is in my opinion so magnificent because its imagery is so layered and enigmatic...and the more one is familiar with the Stones' musical journey, the richer the video's imagery becomes. I am at a loss to explain where the director got the (older) clips from...they are marvelous and his mixing of old and new is seamless...amazing, really.

Though one might think, at first view, that it is a Depression-era pastiche of images, in fact the arc of the story begins in Chicago in late 1961, (the cars and pedestrians give it away, and at 0:36 a parade float goes by with a date and a "View for '62" claim protruding from what seems to be an intercontinental ballistic missile hovering over a cardboard rendering of the skyline of Chicago - evoking Kennedy-era America in the days of bomb shelter exercises and a deep-freeze Cold War).

On the surface the story is one of lost love and longing, using the Mississippi River - and its majestic run up and down the backbone of Middle America - as an allegorical construct. One sees (at 0:48) the run of cities leading from Chicago down to New Orleans...the Crescent City.

This is the beginning of a journey for disillusioned lovers - one man (from the wrong side of the tracks...the working-class part of town) hoping to forget the woman he has left behind; a woman he knows will haunt him forever ('Cause you always saw the best in me'). He's heading back South by train, leaving the big city and all its temptations and disappointments. She, elegant and pretty, is seen boarding a bus...to where? Is she staying behind? Is she coming after him? Or going back home herself? Not coincidentally Chicago is the spiritual home of the Stones' greatest musical inspirations - all men who made that journey from the deep South to the mean streets of Chi-town and brought their art, the Blues, with them...the Stone's very name coming from a Chicago Blues classic. Also the birth of the Stones was in 1962...so the symbolism seems to grow more layered the more one knows Stones lore.

There are so many stunning images in the video - the one at 1:25 when a young woman, lit beautifully by the neon lights blazing the night, leans her head back in a darkened bus, is an amazing moment - but perhaps none are more enigmatic than the burning tree, a symbol for the power of faith (Exodus 3:2 'There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up.')...that the burning tree appears at the moment the song transforms from a ballad-like lament to a glorious Gospel Blues is not lost on this listener.

Here I must disagree with those that criticize the lyrics as middling. I think the conversational tone of the lyrics is wonderful and winning...these are sentiments expressed in simple heartland prose. That Jagger chooses to over-emote is a function of his late-career vocal mannerism - one wonders what a peak-era Jagger could do with this (the Jagger singing 'Let It Loose' comes to mind) - but who can complain when a man toward the end of his seventh decade on this earth can still put forth an effort like this? At what point does one just accept the fact that what we are getting is a minor miracle...most of the man's contemporaries are dust in the wind and he's still creating and producing...and occasionally thrilling...

...by the time the South has been reached and the glorious background vocals of the Gospel chorus (seemingly lifted directly from the very end of Exile's 'Just Wanna See His Face') fully kick in (at 3:14 and nearly orgasmically to an ever higher plane at 3:37) and ascend in unison, the song builds to a spine-tingling crescendo and the images of the Mississippi flooding and New Orleans at carnival signal the end of the line...and at this point the poignancy of the line "I'll be dreaming all about ya, 'Cause you always saw the best in me." has devastating emotional impact.

Following The River, in my opinion, will in time be recognized as one of the Stones' late-career highlights.

The video - more a resonant, deeply evocative short film with Following The River as its soundtrack than a music video - is an undisputed masterpiece.

P.S. Tumbled, I don't know what the guy playing with the pebbles/stones waiting for the bus means to you...to me he closes the circle with the last rocks as the bus approaches...and decides to let the bus go by (allegorically the woman was in a bus earlier in the story)...perhaps coming to peace with himself that he is finally where he belongs...even if he had to lose the woman he loved to get to that place...

(Others less romantic and more cynical could also interpret this as symbolizing the old adage that women are like buses...eventually there's always another one coming by...)

I agree with Turd. Beautiful work especially at this late stage of the game.

Quote
Memo From Tina Turner
I love this tune as well but many people seem to hate it for some reason. I'm actually quite surprised that all the comments on this thread have been positive so far.

I think it's a 'tearjerker' beyond good taste;
I think the string section is corny, to put it really mildly...
And Jagger's over-affected 'braying' just sounds embarrasing imho.
But hey- true: the melody is kinda good; and overall it definitely does not ruin "CD 2" for me.
I will have a look at the video, 'though. Promise! ;o)

It IS a masterpiece...Mick is singing great...what´s the @#$%& problem? If someone can bring me to tears...that´s great...!!!

I, for one, have been pleasantly surprised by both the tune and vid for Following The River. If it smacks a little of an X Factor/American idol winner's song, then it also is operating in the same sort of sonic space as tracks like Winter and Shine A Light. It's nowhere near that standard, of course, but if it is about ~80% a new song, it's good enough for me at this late stage in the game.

As an aside, the 'comb in your hair' detail also reminds me, very specifically, of Brass Buttons by Gram Parsons.

Good comparison, CaledonianGonzo, especially since Parsons was a part of the Stones' entourage at that time!